October 16, 2023
Greetings from the moment,
If you live in a small town, or happen to wander through one, you may find the local grocery store still has a checkout stand with a cashier behind it. It is becoming a rare thing, this little stage where people meet and exchange a little of themselves. A brief wait in a short line where stories are traded in among the foodstuffs and currency.
I was in one of these short lines recently. I had a bunch of bananas and a pint of half-and-half. The bananas were for banana bread that I would not be allowed to eat. This delicacy was to be reserved for my daughter’s daughter, Ila, who has expressed a delight in banana bread, and will be baked by Suzanne, who has expressed a delight in Ila.
I don’t resent Ila for the special treatment. As it happens, Ila likes me as much as she does banana bread, and if the moment presents itself, I believe she will share hers with me. She has been raised, in her tiny time here, to be generous and kind, and so my belief is well founded.
The half-and-half, or ‘creamer’ as some describe it, is intended for my coffee. I write that with a smile, since it is an ironic purchase. When I have coffee, I add a rather small amount of creamer to it, some say a comical amount. It has been a subject of conversation for decades, broached by relatives, friends, strangers at conventions, baristas at cafes. The unspoken question is: “Why do you even bother? Why not just drink it black?” And is often not left unspoken.
Regardless, since so little of the half-and-half is used, it almost always spoils before I go through a pint of it. So, most of every pint that I purchase is poured down the kitchen sink, usually after a couple of days of watching it coagulate on the top of my coffee. I know this when I buy the next pint. It is a peculiar indulgence.
When I make coffee, I am reminded of countless times I’ve had a cup while writing or sitting with a friend or perhaps enjoying a piece of banana bread. When I add my soupcon of creamer, I sometimes think of my Dad, and my sisters, who love a cup of tea, who add so much half-and-half it challenges the definition of the drink.
Which leads me back to the checkout stand.
When I was a young person I worked in a grocery store for several years. It was a formative experience, which founded a strong work ethic, and also instilled a certain empathy for people who work in such places. Not to mention fed my natural curiosity in the stories of others.
The cashier at the checkout was a petite teenager with enormous glasses and pink fringed hair. She was polite and professional and conducted our transaction efficiently. At the end of the counter was another teenager, a young man who would be responsible for bagging up my purchase and, if necessary, carry it out to my car. Neither would be necessary, but he stayed there anyway. I mention his role because it is as rare as unicorns.
I said to the cashier: “Do you ever look at what people buy and make up stories about why they are buying them?” The girl blushed nearly as pink as her hair, and tried to hide a smile. She looked around to see who might be listening and then nodded. I looked at the boy who said “Oh yah, all the time.”
“So what was the strangest combination you can remember? What made you really wonder, ‘What the heck is going on there?’”
The girl laughed so hard I knew she was thinking of a vivid example, but no amount of coaxing would get her to say what it was. The young man, clearly trying to make an impression on her, said: “Onion. A single onion.”
She said: “Not like that, he means a weird combination…”
“Seriously, like three people have come through here lately and just bought a single onion. It’s so random.”
“It’s not random, it’s so specific, like you can tell…” she moaned with frustration at him.
She looked at me and shrugged, like, “What are you going to do with kids today?”
“So, what would you say about my purchase after I left?” I asked.
They were flatfooted. They looked at the bananas and the half-and-half, and then looked at me, sort of a matching set of bland. If there had been any inspiration it had been drained from them.
I glanced at the things on the little conveyer belt and felt everything I’ve described to you; banana bread and Ila and coffee and friends and writing and tea and siblings and Dad and the connection between them, held it in one thought, in one moment.
The two of them exchanged a brief glance and both gave a sheepish giggle, and I let them off the hook. We parted company, for a moment partners in a silly game that connected fifty years of history.
It is an unremarkable moment, and inside it is all this color and richness. Moments like this are passed back and forth all day, everywhere, in deep conversations and in the fraction it takes to hold a door for a stranger or buy a stamp or drop your book off at the library. Our place, I think, is to see them for what they are, and hold them as a real part of our day.
“Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?” Thornton Wilder
Hope this finds you in the moment,
David
Copyright © 2023 David Smith
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